


Ichor

by artemis69



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Immortal!Stiles, M/M, Pagan!Gods Stilinski, The fic where pagan!god Stiles meets Derek and basically calls dibs against the entire universe, sterek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:48:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27805594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artemis69/pseuds/artemis69
Summary: Offerings had always tasted bitter to Stiles when prayers used to be bonds.But humans forgot that they could be flesh and blood, and the limitations vanished. Humans forgot Stiles, and allowed him to change.These days Stiles is weak, but Stiles canbe.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 72
Kudos: 420





	Ichor

**Author's Note:**

> _In Greek mythology, ichor (/ˈaɪkər/; Ancient Greek: ἰχώρ) is the ethereal fluid that is the blood of the gods and/or immortals._
> 
> Hi people! So it's been a long (LONG) time since I've published, but the combination of a nice ask on tumblr and reading back on some sweet comments helped me motivate myself and finish this OS. I have several WIP that are close to finished, so if the motivation stays, you may have another fic very soon (fingers crossed).
> 
> This story was finished in the night/early morning, helped by an astounding volume of tea, and has been kindly read over by my beloved **seanconneraille**. All the errors left are my fault (my brain is very tired).

Stiles opens his eyes on a grey sky.

The earth against his back is damp but warm; the grass sparse, brittle under his fingertips.

He breathes, deeply, just once, and takes the time to enjoy the feeling of ribs expanding around his lungs once again.

Then, he stands up, and starts walking. 

* * *

He follows the flowers.

It’s a long, tortuous way to travel, passing through mountains, empty fields and busy cities. Stiles has followed the flowers many times in the past, but the path is ever-changing, shifted and blurred by time and humans’ activities.

He doesn’t mind. He has all the time in the universe and so many new things to fill the days.

And the flowers have never led him astray.

Seasons pass. The longer he walks, the stronger he becomes. The few whispers drifting through his head are now hundreds, thousands, pulsating like swarming bees in his mind.

Stiles listens to them with fondness. He learns.

And still, he keeps walking.

The trail ends in a town called Beacon Hills, in front of a house struggling to contain bright, red blooms inside the small garden’s limits.

Stiles sighs, rubs the palm of his hand against his face; wonders if he missed her by much.

Then, he crosses the garden and knocks on the door, a silly little rhythm that he has always liked. 

John opens the door with a grin that eats his entire face and engulfs him in a hug that is more familiar to Stiles than the entire world.

“I was waiting for you,” John says, as he has always done.

For the first time since Stiles opened his eyes once more, he smiles.

* * *

_Of them all, John had always looked the more innocuous. Kind face, kind voice, kind laugh, kind hands._

_Day after day, century after century, John had melted into human crowds and so few of them ever thought to look at him twice_

_It made it so easy, even for Stiles sometimes, to forget how ancient he is._

_Older than prayers, words, humans._

_For as long as life had raised its head up hoping for protection, John had been the one to smile down._

* * *

“Last healer died twenty-two years ago. Illiterate, didn’t have any apprentice,” John explains while reheating some food. None of them needs to eat. Most of them like to anyway.

“Any idea of where she could pop back up?” Stiles asks from the sitting room, his voice resonating strangely against modern walls. It sounds empty and too close at the same time.

The new house is tiny compared to some of their other ones, with a distinct lack of gold ornaments that Stiles is grateful for and a lack of couches that saddens him.

“Could very well be around here. I’ve sowed the flowers all over the continent— “

“I’ve seen that,” Stiles interrupts, amused. One of the forests he crossed further South had been so drenched in their blooms that he couldn’t see the earth under them. He’d spent a night there, surrounded by the sweet perfume and hoping to hear her laugh in the shadows.

“—so, it’s really just a question of time,” John finishes with a small smile. “always is.”

“I’ve sowed some on my way,” Stiles admits, popping his head back into the kitchen, “especially near their science centers.”

From experience, the subtle art of poison has never been a widespread knowledge in humankind, and Stiles doesn’t want to get her back only for her to blink out like a mayfly.

More importantly, she has always been so much happier when they used the flowers to heal. Stiles would do much, much more for her smiles.

All in all, Stiles is not worried. Humans have never needed much incentives to find new ways to save or kill each other. They will find the flowers again in the undergrowth of a forest, for best or worst, like they have done times and times again through history.

Stiles doesn’t care about the details as long as she exists again.

John nods, eyes warm, “And how do you feel? You look good.” 

Stiles hums, stretches.

“Rarely been better. This one will be long I guess.” He taps the side of his head where all the voices are whispering.

John’s eyebrows raise and his mouth tilts up, pleased. His hand covers Stiles’, big and kind. His voice is soft.

“I’m glad. I’ve missed you. Had an inkling that these could be your centuries. You have to see what passes for music and divertissement these days. They’re going to _worship_ _you_.”

Stiles hugs him, tight and impulsive, and laughs.

* * *

_Claudia burst into existence from the wonderous grin of an old woman, bent in two over crushed blooms, and the screams of a young mother running between the trees to an already lost child, black stains on their lips and tongue._

_John found her stumbling out of the woods, hair red as petal and eyes black as pistil, tears all over her face._

_She was already flickering back into nothingness, hands and feet only shimmers in the air._

_She had looked up at him and smiled through her tears. John had smiled down._

_And, for her, John had opened his arms for the first time to keep._

_And even now, far away from that first forest with its old centuries-old trees, in the banality of their new kitchen, John’s pockets are full of black seeds._

_For as long as John will exist, Claudia’s flower will never go extinct, ready to stain black the lips of the saved and the dying._

_And John has never_ not _been._

* * *

Stiles loves schools.

He has always thrived in spaces built on rigid rules but filled with people dreaming to escape the stranglehold. Chaos under pressure, pending anarchy under a thin glaze of civility.

But there is something more in young humans that Stiles genuinely enjoys. A certain type of euphoria in their rebellion, a symphony of minds craving flipped tables and afraid of blandness.

Too much love, too much fears, too many possibilities. Overwhelmed and underwhelmed by it all and, still, longing for more.

Stiles has befriended many of them through the eras, all as different as humans could be. None of them has ever disappointed him.

This time around, his favorite human is called Scott. A frailty of a boy with too big of a smile and an unending faith in the greatness of the world.

When he meets him, Scott has broken lungs, an absentee father and no friends. He could easily be one of Stiles’ flock, but it’s the first time Stiles has ever heard Scott’s voice.

Stiles likes him.

Scott introduces him to video games and the internet, where Stiles flourishes. It’s a refreshing feeling to have direct access to talk with his people, outside of badly lit bars, war fields and opium dens for once.

In exchange, Stiles helps Scott with homework and keeps magically modified inhalers in his pockets for the very bad days.

All in all, their system works pretty well.

* * *

It’s a Tuesday evening, and Stiles is working on his History homework with the enthusiasm of the truly fascinated.

So many things these humans have remembered.

So much they forgot. Often the most interesting parts.

Stiles turns the pages, head in his hand.

Here they are, engraved in so many sculptures and temples. Slightly wrong but still pretty faithful renderings of eyes Stiles has met times and times through the millennia.

They used to shape the world, when humans thought them able to.

And here they lay now, their temples trapped in glossy pictures and their myths sterilized by academic wording.

Humans will never kill them, because concepts can’t _die_.

But they disarmed them.

Stiles knows that some of the faces now staring at him through eyes of rock and paper would prefer never to exist again than only exist in parts.

Like humans, they all have their flaws. And so many can never forget how sweetly their names used to sound when breathed in worship.

But oh, how does Stiles _love_ to be forgotten.

They were born immutable, those born from humans. Cast into life by ideas polished to the finer details by thousands of minds rehashing the same exact wording.

Offerings had always tasted bitter to Stiles when prayers used to be bonds. 

But humans forgot that they could be flesh and blood, and the limitations vanished.

Humans forgot _Stiles,_ and allowed him to change.

These days Stiles is weak, but Stiles can _be_.

John appears into the room on light feet, his knuckles brushing the door in a mockery of a knock. He crosses the room without a word, shoulder hunched up and a frown on his face. He looks older, somehow, despite his face being the exact same as the one Stiles first met millennia ago.

He slides something in front of Stiles, covering the history book. Inside the red file are pictures of half a dead body under harsh light, blood splattered everywhere and darkening the grass around it. The white of the ankles and feet looks like candle wax again the forest floor.

Stiles’ eyebrows raise. John crouches near the desk, his fingers tracing the gruesome wound bisecting the girl’s stomach.

“She was a wolf,” John finally says, his voice tender, sad. Familiar.

Stiles doesn’t need to hear more.

* * *

_When Stiles was still blinking in and out of existence, an idea as frail as a dragonfly’s wing, humans and gods alike had loved the shifters._

_Shapeshifters in human clans were a source of power, pride and, often, survival._

_Where the human couldn’t see, the shifter saw. Where the human couldn’t hear, the shifter heard. Where the human couldn’t go, the shifter went. Where the human died, the shifter endured._

_They were_ more _, in ways humans used to respect as proof of the divine._

_They called them Beloved. Favorites._

_Then came new religions and their gods set in parchments and ink. Gods crafted by and for humans only, strong with the whispers of many and dripping blood in ways only human gods could._

_Quickly, the humans holding the books realized that in order to make others crave light, they had to make them fear darkness first._

_For that, they turned the woods and the night and the shifters into foes to overcome._

_Their stories stopped calling them Favorites, and labeled them monsters._

_Of all the shifters, John had always been partial to the wolves._

_Because they were his in all the ways beings could be, individuals and entire packs whispering in his mind every hour of the day. They used to build him beautiful shrines deep in the woods, made of fur and bones and earth._

_So, when the wolves disappeared, John heard each of their whimpers; had to look down at golden eyes again and again as they closed for the last time, while humans fed their pelts and shrines into bonfires._

_But John also had to listen to the chorus of trembling whispers from human kids in their beds, learning to fear darkness, dreaming too loudly of dripping fangs and golden eyes. And John had to look down on humans crawling through the forest, their eyes and ears too dull and their legs too slow against Favorites that were_ more _in every way._

_The humans may not pray old gods anymore, may not call John by name or chant his words, but they never stopped looking up for protection._

_John had existed long before prayers, long before words, long before Favorites._

_And John’s role had never been to choose whose voice to extinguish and whose to save._

_Now, centuries later, John looks up at Stiles and Stiles knows._

_There is a dead wolf on the desk and a beloved voice that turned quiet in John’s brain._

_John was not made to choose._

_But Stiles isn’t John._

_And he’s never been the god of the idle, resigned ones._

* * *

So, that night, Stiles goes into the woods.

And, that night, he meets Derek Hale.

* * *

Derek Hale is grim, rude and wears his beauty like a serrated knife.

He approaches Stiles with his head held high, face precisely angled for the light to grate against his cheekbone and drip on his neck. His fake smile cuts deeper than fangs. His eyes are flint.

Stiles doesn’t need to see claws to recognize a predator.

He throws a dorky wave his way.

Hale’s body language turns from beautiful and closed off to beautiful and threatening, all harsh words and flexing biceps.

Stiles snorts. Hale stills, surprised.

“Good try buddy, but this stopped working on me a while ago.” Stiles’ left hand flails up and down, encompassing everything beautiful in the shifter. It’s a lot to encompass. Stiles needs to use his second hand. “My people tend to fall on the intense end of the spectrum. Believe me, I’ve seen it all—done almost as much.” His mouth twists on a thought. “Please, tell me you didn’t try that on my _father_.”

“Your father?” Hale’s voice is plunging into a growl now, unsettled and unhappy about it.

It’s a nice sound. Stiles has always had a weakness for the stormier ones.

“John? Your Sheriff?” Stiles answers, growing distracted when he catches sight of a hole in the ground just a few feet away.

Hale moves with him, trying to keep him away but clearly growing more hesitant of throwing his weight around.

“You are his…son? He has a son?” The disbelief in his voice is noticeable, but it is softer.

The wolves have always looked up to John; had loved him before they even knew his name.

“In a way.” Stiles bats a hand in the air. “I was never _born_ , obviously, but he found me. And he kept me. After a few millennia of interlocked identities, he’s my father in all the ways that counts.” He crouches near the hole, his back turned to Hale. He shrugs. “All the ways available to us anyway.”

Stiles leans down, one hand in the earth and his face crinkles. The mutilated remains of the wolf are a pitiful tableau deep in the ground, small, shredded and drowned in wolfsbane flowers.

Based on the glimpses Stiles caught of Hale’s hands, he didn’t use either gloves or a shovel to bury her.

Stiles doesn’t bother with condolences, already knowing how they would be welcomed. He knows the faint smell of grief will speak for itself to the shifter’s nose.

“That was no hunter,” Stiles finally asks after observing for a few seconds more. Hale’s head lowers slowly, brows furrowed and staring at Stiles. “Another wolf?” A small nod, sharp and angry.Stiles stands back up, dusting his hands on his jeans.“Tell me everything you know,” he demands, his feet carrying him to the burnt husk of a house a few feet away.

Hale follows, eyes glowing blue but something like hope in the line of his shoulders.

* * *

This is not what an alpha werewolf should look like.

It’s been centuries since Stiles spent much time with a wolf that isn’t Derek Hale, but he remembers well the soft furs and the purity of light in their eyes.

This thing that prowls inside the school is a corruption of a wolf, built back wrong by Rage and Despair. Stiles can see the strokes of Grief in all the angles of his bones and his opened jaw. 

None of those three has ever been a very rewarding god.

Derek growls and hurls himself at the Alpha, clearly decided to keep him away from Stiles.

Derek is only a beta and he looks absurdly smaller when he leaps toward the Alpha’s shoulders. Suspended in the air, so close to the Alpha’s jaw, he looks like he could be shattered into pieces at any moment.

But Derek has spent many days along Stiles now.

And Stiles _likes_ him.

So, Derek is faster, stronger.

_More_.

Derek lands on Peter’s back and buries his fangs in his shoulders, throwing his head sharply back. The Alpha rears off with a scream, claws shooting up to tear at him. But Derek has already cleared off in a graceful somersault, landing on dancer feet.

He dodges a few wrathful hits, his shoulders and hands held low, teeth bared, waiting for an opportunity.

Stiles watches and kind of wants to pet Derek’s face. He wants to know how it’d feel to kiss him through fangs and blood.

He wonders if Derek would melt or bite.

Wonders which one would please him the most.

It’s a passing thought, one in the dozen Stiles has every second. It tears a smile out of him anyway.

After a few minutes of inconclusive fighting, the clash of teeth and claws deafening in the claustrophobic corridor, the Alpha finally turns his head back toward Stiles.

Stiles, leaning calmly against a locker with one shoulder, raises his eyebrows in silent question.

The Alpha wrenches himself out of Derek’s grip with little care, not even flinching when Derek’s claws tear deep inside the meat of his flank. His red eyes are focused on Stiles, bloody fangs in full display.

So. He’s clever under the madness, intelligence still gleaming through the rot to read the real power dynamic in the air.

Or maybe he felt Stiles in his nephew, in the embers of Derek’s scent, the unforgiveness of his grip and the strength of his bones.

The Alpha rushes toward Stiles, muscle bunching and back bent like a broken tree. His roar makes the metal of the lockers shake like leaves in the wind.

Stiles lets himself be manhandled for a second, his body thrown against the lockers and scraping against the wall.

From up-close, the Alpha smiles, horrid and coated in blood. He drags his nose against Stiles’ wrist, the ivory of his fangs cold against his skin and smelling like roadkill. Hovering around Stiles’ neck, Peter Hale’s voice rumbles about power and bite and worthiness.

Stiles has been prayed to in the mud and from opulent beds, through smeared lipsticks, powdered skins and dirty fingers, in fire and blood and music and alcohol. He’s answered tears and kisses and screams alike.

There is no power left for this simulacre of a wolf to offer him.

And he was stupid enough to get close.

Arrogance is always, always their fatal flaw.

Stiles shakes the hold off as if playfighting with a child and opens his arms. He cups one of his hand against the foaming muzzle, heedless of the dripping teeth near his fingers.

The lights overhead flicker and blink out, one after the other in a shower of sparks, darkness answering Stiles’ call and devouring the corridor. Peter’s eyes widen in realization and his muscles bunches, trying to break away from Stiles’ grip.

Shadows rush around their feet, obediently skirting around Derek in inky tendrils. When they touch Peter’s feet, he tries to howl but can’t open his jaw.

Stiles grins. “My father says Hi.”

* * *

_Stiles vaguely knows that shifters have kept to the old ways when humans haven’t, but never really paid it any mind. None of them have been his for a long time, their numbers dwindling and their terror addressed to others than him._

_Then, one day, while roaming the woods dispersing seeds and lazily looking for Derek, Stiles stumbles back to the ruins of the old Hale house._

_He enters through the side into what could generously be called a room, walls dark and wet with humidity, devoured by the fire, tumbling down and wind whistling through them._

_And here, abandoned in a corner on the blackened floor, under the last bit of roof left intact by tragedy, is Derek’s shrine._

_Stiles kneels near it, fingers running over the bundle of junk._

_Thrown together against the wall are bits of burned clothes and the remaining half of a charred picture, children’s smiles hidden by ashes. The lyrics from an old song are written on the back of what looks like a gas station receipt. A dried out wolfsbane flower is drooping, petals falling everywhere and bits of fur matching the dull black of Laura Hale in the ground. In front of it all, a dried-out biscuit._

_It’s a sad, sad thing. A shrine built with no particular god in mind because Derek doesn’t know what to hope for anymore._

_Still, it’s everything Derek has left, freely given to anyone who would take it._

_It’s beautiful._

_Stiles arranges the shrine a little, preventing the flower from falling down and brushing some ashes off the picture._

_He doesn’t understand why nobody bothered to claim Derek up before._

_Can’t understand how any of his brothers and sisters could hear that voice and deem it only one in millions._

_Their loss._

_Stiles is here now. He found him._

_And when he looks at Derek, he sees._

_And he craves._

* * *

The hunters come.

They always do.

They hear about the wolves, and they come with bullets and traps and poisonous flowers.

They call themselves protectors, but Stiles has seen this unfold so many times. There is rarely justice when the blood is spilled for the crimes of others.

The hunters come, but like other humans, they have forgotten that long before discovering iron, their ancestors had to pray the danger away.

And they have forgotten whom they used to pray _to_.

And by calling them monsters, they forgot that shifters had been Favorites first. _Beloved_.

Hunters tear through the old Hale house. They step on Derek’s shrine without even looking down. They break down doors without knocking first.

Still.

Stiles answers.

The hunters leave.

* * *

Derek is made to worship, like all wolves, wild and powerful and with enough loyalty to keep hordes of gods alive.

Stiles doesn’t really care.

Derek is beautiful. The kind of beauty only found in wolves, humanity and wilderness honed to a fine edge, a weapon and a gift. Stiles sees the way people look at Derek in the street, in shops, in restaurants. They stare and stare and stare.

Stiles doesn’t really care.

What Stiles craves is other. Deeper. Stronger. _Inhuman_.

He craves vulnerability. Craves all the cracks and splits, the old wounds barely scabbed over, the gashes oozing bitterness and the ones gushing guilt, the trembling hands and the oscillating eyes and the blue of his eyes.

Stiles wants to crawl in it, learn the shape of them, their depth, their story. Learn where the pain cuts soul deep, too deep to even touch, and where it hurt for long enough to numb.

And then he wants to find all the good parts. The smiles that won’t show outside of a lonely dimple, the shy pride, the things learned and the tendrils of healing. The curve of a real smile on a stubbled cheek and the pulse in a wrist and the arc of a foot and the memories of laughter.

Stiles wants to gather it all, all these hollows and parts that make Derek Hale, and he wants to keep them. To guard every each one of them.

Stiles’ father is a protector, his mother a killer dreaming of healing.

Stiles looks at Derek, days after days, to find something starving staring back from the depth of his eyes; something left abandoned for too long.

And Stiles, who’d never been made with an impulse toward peace and quiet, finally discovers something he wants to soothe.

* * *

They are in a car, roof down, wind everywhere because Stiles has wanted to try it since he came back. He has no idea of their destination, but Stiles has all the time in the world and Derek is trying to learn to be happy. Randomly, Stiles reaches in his pocket and lets some seeds into the wind, spreading flowers everywhere.

Derek has his sunglasses on and he’s driving too fast on an empty road, fields and emptiness surrounding them on all sides. The sun is beating the asphalt, creating strange shapes and blurry mirages. The field are black and white yellow, burnt. The sky is too blue. The entire world around them a study in contrasts.

Human science fiction thinks that immortality turns centuries into heartbeats. It doesn’t. Days are still days to Stiles, it’s the past that gets muddied. Too much of everything smooths many angles of the memories, eras and faces that lived thousands of years apart blending together.

Humans and animals, they all live _so_ _hard_ , their feelings raw and sharp. Anger, happiness, boredom, grief, they jump from one to the other like kaleidoscopes.

Stiles is dulled, his feelings the scope and slowness of geological events. There are few things to surprise or delight him anymore. He is content or vaguely upset, but it usually takes effort to summon much more than that.

But here, the radio is boring and difficult to hear over the wind, so Stiles sings loudly bits of songs he remembers from various eras. The metal of the car is hot and almost alive under his hand. Derek shakes his head, but his shoulders are down, lax, and his fingers follow Stiles’ voice by tapping on the wheel.

When Stiles’ laugh bubbles in the air, happy to be here, reveling in the day and the moment and the company, Derek turns to stare at him, all asshole in the eyebrows but with a soft smile.

So, Stiles catches his neck in his hand, throw the glasses away and kisses him, still laughing against his mouth.

Derek swears and the car swerves, two wheels leaving the ground for a second as Derek stops them brutally half in a field, half on the road. The air smells of burned rubber and baked asphalt, the heat instantly overwhelming under the stationary sun.

Derek tries to stare at him, round eyes and bewildered expression, but Stiles just smiles and smiles against his cheekbones, the front of his teeth against skin, his forehead damp against Derek’s.

When Derek’s hand curls around his waist, prudent as if touching something precious, Stiles grips harder and laughs again. He crawls in his lap, hitting the gearshift with his knee and half seating on the wheel. And Derek is shaking his head again, but in small movements, careful not to break the contact between their mouths, sighing and berating in the same breath.

His hands are big on Stiles, big and cautious and reverent.

Stiles melts closer and closer, throws the seat back hard enough for their teeth to clash and send Derek into a new swearing rant.

And Stiles buries his fingers against tendons and warm skin, in muscles and hair, in and under clothes.

Stiles bites and touches and clings, because Stiles is greedy and he _found_ him, and he’s going to _keep him_.

* * *

_Stiles remembers wars and songs in the wind like epilepsy turned musical. He can taste freefall and cold water and blood. He’s known the greatest artists, the greatest inventors, the most forgotten homeless men. He’s held the hands of kids and elders and prostitutes. Kissed those bursting with love or spite. Those who wanted to shake the world for a laugh or bloodshed._

_Stiles knows the many flavors humanity can come in._

_Stiles is the drive, the onrush, kinetic, spark, electricity. He’s a speeding heartbeat and sweat trickling down a spine and a rush of endorphin in the blood._

_Stiles is adrenaline answering to fear, the laugh in front of despair. He’s there for the stubborn, the stupid, the beautiful, the lovers. Stiles appeared for kids and men on their dying bed, the ones who looked at death and grinned. Stiles had been there for both men and monsters from both sides of a weapon. Stiles has met favorites running and flying and swimming. Stiles’ head is full of the screams of people jumping in the emptiness for the pure joy of it._

_Stiles’ souls are the stubborn, the beautiful, the stupid, the glorious. Livewires of souls, for years or a second._

_Stiles is the thrill of letting go, the freedom of giving up on order._

_Stiles is that spark of electric happiness when meeting chaos, bared teeth in front of despair._

* * *

“Which one are you?”

Stiles hums. His fingers run over a naked shoulder, shining with sweat, teeth mark already fading under their room’s soft light.

“Did you ever wonder if the world was meaningless?” He kisses the shoulder, keeps talking against salty warm skin, “Did it frighten you, or made the world more beautiful?”

Derek shakes his head slowly, never taking his eyes away.

Stiles smiles, because he knows. Like Scott, Derek was never one of _his_.

When Derek met emptiness, he never laughed in its face. When the world shook Derek, Derek didn’t see it as a liberation.

When shaken, Derek brittles.

When shaken, Derek rings hollow.

Stiles raises a hand, cradles the sharp angle of Derek’s jaw. Under his fingers, the stubble contrasts delightfully with soft skin.

Stiles is electricity crawling over skin, anxiety turned elation. Open arms in front of a vertigo. Being touched by chaos and embracing it as freedom.

Stiles is an impulse that gave itself a name.

“Hi Derek. I’m your Stiles.”

They are many, humans and others, that tried to know Stiles for whom he truly is.

Derek can’t understand him, not viscerally, because he was never meant to. But he doesn’t shy away from Stiles.

Even there, trapped between Stiles’ fingers and thighs, talking of things he will never comprehend, he doesn’t try.

In Derek’s eyes, Stiles can only find wonder, with a touch of something hurt and tender. Derek doesn’t understand but Derek loves, with a fierceness bordering on faith.

Stiles lightens his grip on the beautiful jaw and lets his fingers settle over the pulse beating in Derek’s throat. Then he bends over and bites at Derek’s mouth, all teeth and smile.

Derek lifts him with a growl and big hands under Stiles’ thighs, dropping him on his lap once more without breaking contact. The kiss is filthy, fangs flickering in and out of it, Derek’s control a vacillating thing. But the hands on Stiles stay careful, caring.

“I could break your bones with a thought,” Stiles whispers against his cheek, panting and still grinning. It’s the truth, and Stiles has no idea why he’s saying it right now except that he needs Derek to know.

Derek snorts, holds his jaw between fingers and turns his head toward him. Kisses his mouth briefly.

“I know,” he simply says before pulling him closer.

Because he does.

Because there is a shrine in their house, a new one that Derek made just for him.

It’s in a wooden box with dark polish, in the exact center of the house.

In it, there are receipts for gas and dinners’ drive-through and a motel room from a road trip months ago. There are movie tickets and post it notes and a doodle on a napkin. There are dried red flowers and black seeds, a picture of John and Stiles and Derek. There is what looks like a bit of the jeep’s broken taillight and an article on Stiles in the local newspaper after his homemade pie won first place. There are also some of the old Hale house’s ashes, Laura’s and Derek’s furs held by a small rubber band, and the half picture of the yellowing kids smiling with closed eyes.

Derek should not be Stiles’. Derek should belong to some of Stiles much more stable brothers and sisters, the ones that exist for justice and love and the lovely girls southwest that whisper of belonging. Derek should look up to John.

Rightfully, Derek is theirs.

But Derek chose to smile at Stiles, over mussed up sheets and syrupy mornings and the kitchen’s fluorescent lightbulb.

Because somehow, Derek _chose_ to put his faith in Stiles. Derek had met chaos and decided that this was where he would lay his heart to be kept safe. 

Because Derek loves _Stiles_.

And Stiles is too old and greedy, and he has been bored and numb too often.

So, Stiles smiles down at Derek, and he touches and clings and he never, ever lets go.

* * *

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Bonus: Stiles and death are bros, because they often meet the same people. 
> 
> Death is super chill with favors, because they don’t care about people dying now or a billion years later, so their whole reaction is a whole “meh” shrug.  
> Stiles offers them a plate of cookies. 
> 
> Derek ends up meeting Claudia twelve years later and he gets adopted HARD. 
> 
> He more or less takes on the role of a god without being aware of it for like half a century, acting to protect the people that others have forgotten. 
> 
> -  
> 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this OS and this universe! Please don't hesitate to come talk to me in the comments I would love to meet you :D
> 
> If you want, you can also reblog the post for this fic on tumblr [here ](https://artemis69.tumblr.com/post/636250630804111360/ichor), to share it with your people, and find all the other bits of fics not published on AO3 [here ](https://artemis69.tumblr.com/tagged/sometimes-I-write-stuff). 
> 
> Thank you so much for taking the time to read this!


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